America Movil , the head of tycoon Carlos Slim’s business empire, reported on Tuesday that its net income soared in the first quarter, driven mainly by foreign exchange gains.
The telecommunications giant reported to the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV) a net profit of 30,797 million pesos, a considerable increase compared to 1,810 million pesos in the same period of 2021.
The company, with a presence in most of the American continent, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe, obtained in the period a comprehensive financing income of 7,300 million pesos, derived from foreign exchange gains.
The firm said its EBITDA was 81.1 billion pesos, an increase of 4.2% from a year earlier, below analysts’ estimate of 83.673 million pesos, according to Refinitv Eikon data.
Consolidated sales of América Móvil, which offers its users fixed and mobile telephony and Internet services , rose 2.4% year-on-year to 211,225 million pesos, with service revenues increasing 3.3%.
The company added 3.2 million mobile subscribers in the first quarter, including 1.9 million postpaid clients of which more than half are from Brazil, 299 thousand from Colombia and 217 thousand from Austria.
The postpaid base increased 8.4% year-over-year to 110 million subscribers. In the prepaid segment, it added 1.3 million subscribers. Mexico contributed 485,000 additions, Colombia 349,000, and Brazil and Central America approximately 200,000 each.
On the fixed line platform, it obtained 232,000 broadband accesses, including 68,000 in Argentina and 63,000 in Mexico, raising the total base to 30.7 million accesses, 2.3% more than in the previous year.
América Móvil launched its 5G technology in Mexico , whose deployment in the first 18 cities in the country will require an investment of 1.8 billion dollars. This amount is added to the injection they have already made to their entire infrastructure.
During the quarter, América Móvil obtained approval from the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) to offer 5G mobile services in Mexico, after it modified 18 concession titles of Carlos Slim’s company to use, take advantage of and exploit spectrum frequency bands. radioelectric that operates in the 3450-3550 MHz segment.
With information from Reuters
